ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Harshitkumar J. Savalia1, Nimisha Patel1 , Krishna Mohan Singh2, Manan Patel2, Shomesh Chandra3, Purva Gohil4, Apurvasinh Puvar4, Chaitanya G. Joshi4 and Rushika Patel5
1Department of Microbiology, Parul Institute of Applied Sciences and Research, Parul University, Vadodara, Gujarat, India.
2Department of Molecular & Cytogenetics, Sterling Accuris Diagnostics, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
3Department of Surgical Oncology, Sterling Hospitals, Gurukul, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
4Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC), Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.
5Department of Bioinformatics, Varahi IO, Chicago, USA.
Article Number: 9984 | © The Author(s). 2025
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2025;19(2):1034-1048. https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.19.2.06
Received: 16 October 2024 | Accepted: 05 March 2025 | Published online: 24 April 2025
Issue online: June 2025
Abstract

This research explores bacterial communities in individuals diagnosed with oral cancer, comparing them to healthy individuals to identify potential variations associated with the condition. The study involved collecting 40 swabs from oral cancer patients, post-therapeutic patients, and healthy individuals, amplifying DNA samples, processing raw data using Perl scripts and Prinseq Lite, performing metagenomic analysis using QIIME 2-2022.2, and taxonomic classification using Greengenes2. There are 91.89% of good quality sequences for downstream analysis. Analysis data indicates that individuals who suffer from oral cancer had much higher prevalence of phylum Actinobacteriota, Firmicutes_A, Campylobacterota, Fusobacteriota, and Patescibacteria. Total 298 species identify in current study, among this Leptotrichia (0.0015%), Prevotella (0.0041%), and Capnocytophaga (0.0052%) are predominant in oral cancer patients compare to healthy individuals. 23 species are absent in normal individuals and post-therapeutic patients but are dominant in oral cancer patients. The increased occurrence suggests a link between this group of bacteria and oral cancer. By comparing the abundance of alpha and beta microorganisms in patients with oral cancer to those in good health, the study highlights the importance of the oral microbial community in maintaining health and preventing disease. It also studies how habits like tobacco use affect microbial communities and how they can raise the risk of disease. In cancer patients, oxidative stress and glycolysis are enhanced, and while certain metabolic abnormalities recovered after therapy, many remain, showing the long-term impact of the illness and treatment. These data suggest that post-treatment microbial regeneration may not occur, increasing cancer recurrence risk. The study’s finding of microbial biomarkers, particularly those related to dysbiosis and changed tumor microenvironment, may inform oral cancer prognostic, therapeutic, and diagnostic methods. This metagenomic work contributes to a better understanding of how lifestyle factors influence microbial ecosystems, allowing lifestyle adjustments to lessen health risks associated with changes in microbial populations.

Keywords

Bacterial Diversity, Dominant Bacteria, Oral Cancer, Metagenomics

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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.